Chapter 6 The Italian Job #2
"You look like a man who belongs in that suit," Alistair says simply. "Even if Enzo hasn't finished it yet."
Then the door swings shut behind him, and the bird-of-paradise shirt disappears into the street.
The atelier is quiet for a moment.
"What," Enzo says, very carefully, "was that."
"That," Preston says, turning a page of the magazine he has not been reading, "was my father. He operates on a frequency the rest of us can't quite tune into."
Enzo stares at the door. Then he turns back to Jax, picks up his measuring tape, and resumes work with the energy of a man who has decided the only sane response to the York family is pure, focused professionalism.
Across the room, Luke holds up a velvet blazer. "Hey, Preston! Look at this one! It’s sparkly!"
Enzo’s head snaps up. He freezes.
Luke is wearing his 'off-duty' clothes. A soft hoodie, jeans, sneakers. He looks like sunshine.
Enzo abandons me mid-measurement. He glides across the room toward Luke like a heat-seeking missile in loafers.
He stops.
He stares.
He puts down his tape measure.
"Madonna," Enzo whispers. He says it the way other men say I see God. "Who is this angel and why has no one told me he was coming?"
Luke looks up from the sparkly blazer. "Oh! Hi. I'm Luke. I'm the Best Man—"
"You," Enzo declares, pressing both hands to his own chest, "are going to destroy me. You are going to reach into my ribcage and you are going to crush my heart like a grape and I am going to thank you for it."
Luke blinks. "...Do you want me to put the blazer back?"
Enzo ignores this entirely. He begins to circle Luke with the focused intensity of a man scoring a Renaissance sculpture. His hands are raised. His expression is pained. He looks like he might weep.
"The shoulders," Enzo breathes. "The neck.
The jawline — Dio mio, the jawline. Do you know what I could do with a jawline like that?
" He stops. He turns to Max. "Do you know what he does to me?
This man walks in here in cotton and he thinks I am just going to function normally?
He thinks I am going to simply continue? "
"Please continue," I say.
Enzo spins back to Luke.
"I have dressed princes," Enzo announces. "I have dressed diplomats. I dressed a man who was briefly a pope. And I say to you now, with full sincerity, that none of them—" he pauses for effect, "—had a torso like that."
Luke looks down at his torso. "It's just a hoodie."
Enzo makes a sound like a man who has been personally wounded.
"Just a hoodie," he repeats, to nobody. To the universe. To whatever god oversees the tragedy of wasted potential. "He says just a hoodie. This is my curse. This is my cross." He rounds on Luke again, reinvigorated. "Take it off."
Luke freezes. "I'm sorry?"
"The hoodie. Take it off. I need to see what I am working with."
"I— there's a shirt underneath—"
"Magnificent," Enzo breathes, as if this is the most exciting news he has ever received. "A shirt. Another layer. I love layers. You know why I love layers?"
"...Because you're a tailor?"
"Because," Enzo says, stepping so close that Luke begins a slow, subtle lean backwards, "taking them off is my favourite part."
Luke turns to me with the expression of a man whose brain has started filling out an incident report.
Enzo produces his tape measure with a dramatic flourish, like a magician revealing the ace of spades.
"I have a private room," Enzo announces.
"In the back. No windows. Soft lighting.
I do my best work in there." He sighs contentedly at the memory.
"We will be completely alone. Just you, me, and the tape.
I will take my time." He looks Luke up and down one final, devastating time. "I am never," he adds, "in a hurry."
"Jax," Luke says, very quietly.
"Yeah."
"Is he—"
"Yeah."
"Should I—"
"Probably."
"STEP AWAY FROM THE PHYSICIAN."
It’s Preston.
He steps out from behind a rack of tuxedos. He's wearing a charcoal suit that fits him better than Enzo's fits Enzo. He walks toward them with the smooth, unhurried movement of a man who has never once needed to raise his voice to empty a room.
Enzo turns. He looks Preston up and down with the clinical eye of a professional. A beat passes.
"Another panic room," Enzo concludes.
"Interesting," Preston says pleasantly. "A man whose primary business is wrapping other people in expensive fabric just called someone else a panic room. The self-awareness in this building is genuinely remarkable."
Enzo stiffens. "I am an artist."
"You are a man with a tape measure and boundary issues," Preston says. "Which, coincidentally, also describes my last three court-mandated patients. I found them fascinating too."
"I was simply—"
"Offering to take my boyfriend into a windowless back room to handle him thoroughly and at length," Preston finishes. "Yes. I heard. We all heard. I suspect the pigeons on the roof heard."
"It was a fitting," Enzo says, drawing himself up to his full height, which is unfortunately several inches below Preston's.
"Of course it was," Preston agrees, with the particular warmth of a man who believes nothing of the sort.
He tilts his head. "Tell me, Enzo — and I ask this as a psychiatrist, so please know it is a genuine clinical inquiry — do you offer all your clients a private room with soft lighting and no fixed end time, or is that a service you reserve for the ones who remind you that your father liked them better? "
The silence is extraordinary.
Enzo goes very still. A vein appears at his temple.
"You," Enzo says softly, "are not a very nice man."
"No," Preston agrees pleasantly. "I'm really not.
" He steps forward and straightens Enzo's lapel with two fingers — not kindly, but with the precise, proprietary energy of a man handling evidence.
"Here is what's going to happen. You are going to take your tape measure, you are going to maintain a professionally appropriate distance from my boyfriend, and you are going to make him the most extraordinary suit of his career. "
A pause. "And if I come back here and find so much as a single unauthorised pin within six inches of his inseam, I will sit down with you for one complimentary therapy session.
" He smiles. "You will not enjoy it. My waiting list is eight months long and every single person on it is there because of something their mother did.
By the time I'm finished you'll be weeping into your shears and calling her to apologise. "
Enzo stares at him.
Preston stares back.
The room holds its breath.
Then, slowly, magnificently, a grin splits Enzo's face. The grin of a man who has just met his natural predator and found the experience unexpectedly thrilling.
"Crudele," Enzo breathes. "You are absolutely crudele."
"I have been told," Preston says.
"Your suit," Enzo says, looking Preston over with fresh, almost reverent eyes. "Who made it?"
"Huntsman. Savile Row."
Enzo winces. "British."
"Devastating, I know."
"Come back Thursday," Enzo says. "Alone. I will fix it."
"I don't need it fixed."
"No," Enzo concedes, with tremendous reluctance. "But I need to fix it. For my own peace." He turns back to Luke, maintaining, notably, a full three feet of distance. "Arms up, cherubino. The sharp one is watching."
Luke raises his arms. He looks at Preston with enormous eyes.
"Did you just try to book him as a patient?” Luke whispers.
“I didn’t try, I succeeded” Preston says, checking his watch. "And you look extraordinary in midnight blue. Enzo — midnight blue. Burn the sparkly one."
"The sparkly one is Valentino," Enzo says, scandalized, already moving.
"It's still on fire," Preston says.
I lean toward Max on the pedestal.
"Preston just won a staring contest with a man whose entire personality is eye contact," I whisper.
"Preston wins every staring contest," Max says. "He practised on me from the moment he opened his eyes as a baby. It is deeply unpleasant."
"The mother comment was cold," I say. "Even for a York."
"He found the load-bearing wall," Max says simply. "He always does."
"I’m kinda turned on," I admit. "That was impressive."
"Focus on your deltoids," Max says, though I see the corner of his mouth twitch. "Enzo is coming back with pins soon. And he looks vengeful."
Twenty minutes later, we are standing on the sidewalk of the Upper East Side. We are measured, pinned, and I am fairly certain I have permanent nerve damage in my left shoulder.
Enzo stands in the doorway of the atelier, watching us leave. He catches Preston’s eye. He nods, a sharp, respectful dip of the chin.
"Call me," Enzo mouths to Preston. "We could destroy people together."
Preston offers a thin, terrifying smile and a single nod back. "Potential asset," Preston murmurs to himself. "Narcissistic, but useful."
"You guys are scary," Luke says, holding Preston’s hand like it's a lifeline. "Like, really scary. Is he going to stalk us?"
"No," Preston says, kissing Luke's temple. "He’s going to make you the best suit of your life. Fear is an excellent motivator for craftsmanship."
I wrap an arm around Max’s shoulders, pulling him into me. He feels solid. Real. Not a flute, not a reed of anxiety. Just Max.
"Well," I say, exhaling a breath I feel like I've been holding since we walked in. "We survived the fitting. The suits are happening. No one died. I call that a win."
"The probability of survival was always high," Max says, checking his watch. "However, the schedule is tight. We are currently twelve minutes behind."
"Behind for what?" I ask, dread creeping back in. "Max. Tell me we’re done. Tell me I can go eat a burger."
Max looks up from his phone. He gives me a look that is equal parts sympathy and warning.
"Not a burger," Max says. "Cake."
"Cake?" I perk up. "I like cake. Cake is good. Are we going to a bakery?"
"We are going to The Bakery," Max corrects me. "Mother has scheduled a tasting with Pierre. He is a sugar artist. He does not believe in flour."
"How do you have cake without flour?" Luke asks, confused.
"Almond dust and despair," Preston supplies helpfully. "Pierre once made a wedding cake entirely out of spun sugar and gold leaf. It cost forty thousand dollars and shattered when the bride tried to cut it."
"Mother has strong opinions on buttercream," Max warns me. "She believes it is 'pedestrian'. She wants a fondant sculpture that represents the merging of our dynasties."
"I just want chocolate," I say, my soul withering slightly. "Is that too much to ask? Just a chocolate cake that tastes like chocolate and not... ambition?"
“In our current reality?” Max says. "Yes. But Rosa is meeting us there."
"Oh, thank God," I breathe. "The Warlord."
"She is bringing her own fork," Max adds.
"Let’s go," I say, opening the limo door. "If I have to eat structural foam, I’m going to need backup."
Max smiles, that rare, real smile that makes the whole nightmare worth it.
"Prepare your insulin levels, Jax" Max says. "We’re going in."